


Sink or Swim

by Inactive Account (sassybleu)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depressed Sherlock, Depression, Established Relationship, Lots of Symbolism, M/M, Patient John, Swimming, UA-Universe Alterations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassybleu/pseuds/Inactive%20Account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is depressed to the point that he stops working, talking, and experimenting. John is there to be patient and understanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sink or Swim

**Author's Note:**

> Goal: No goal this time.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing except my words.
> 
> Notes: This is a prompt I chose from my list to get back into writing. Everything that has to deal with Sherlock's feelings and his personal swimming metaphors and comparisons are of my own creation, as they are exactly how I feel right now, and have been for a while.

The world is dull and the skies are grey. Hope is a four letter word that holds no meaning. It’s the feeling of everything he wants to do. Everything he needs to get done, and enjoys doing, but just can’t find it in himself to want to do it. He enjoys cases and experiments, both are something that bring him joy, but his mind cannot get into the mood to enjoy things. It’s like a haze of fog has settled in, blocking all feeling except those that leave him feeling nothing. The haze makes him desperate, he wants to do _something_. Anything. But somehow he can’t. It’s impossible to clear the air, and make the fog recede. Acting is tiresome, and it drains his energy faster than normal. He likes to sleep more and more, and takes pleasure in reading about other people’s lives. He likes being able to escape away from himself and become someone else awhile. But each story is only a distraction from the state of nothingness he lives in. He tends to stay on the couch now, only leaving when necessary.

He’s also more compliant than he’d ever been in his life. It’s easier to be assigned something, and given a procedure to follow than it is to do, think, and entertain himself. If he’s asked to stop talking, he will. If he’s asked to pick up milk or clean up the flat, he does. He’s read descriptions online of what people online feel like when they are depressed; they describe it as feeling like you’re drowning, but being able to see everyone around you breathe. He can’t help but feel that it is not like drowning, but like sinking in the depths of the ocean. Everyone around you in swimming near the surface, occasionally swimming below before being dragged back up by their friends, while he alone slowly sinks farther and farther down; never receiving that small tug that would bring his head above water again. Sinking feels like nothingness; you could so easily move, and paddle your way back towards the top, and help yourself when no one else will, but the haze in your mind is like stone, and it weighs you down; not letting you swim back up to the surface where the other remain happy. Where you used to be.

And then there are those that look for you. There are the people who will dive below the surface, and open their eyes, to see you in a state of misery, slowly sinking, but you always remain just out of reach. They follow you as far as they can go but their need for air resurfaces, and they break top of the water again, brought back to the light of happiness, because they couldn’t go down with you. They can’t put themselves through so much pain as to catch you, and slowly help you back up to the sunshine, and you forget them, still sinking, until it gets to the point that they stop holding their breaths, and they stop swimming towards you, until you sink even farther, and all sight of them is gone.

That’s the most he feels, is the utter nothingness that he can do. He can’t shake the weight, so he cannot paddle up, and he can’t help but feel like there really was nothing to him ever at all; because if everyone else can take their lungs and fill them so easily, and they can smile and laugh in the sunshine, why can’t he? There’s nothing physical weighing him down, so why can’t he just get over it, and why can’t he just smile and laugh as easily as they do? As easily as they tell him it is? Do they all feel the stone weighing them down, but they are simply better at kicking their legs, so they can remain at the top? Is something so wrong with him that he can’t just get over his problems, and splash along with the rest of him? Why does he get told that everything he feels is all in his head, and that he should just stop feeling the weight and stop asking for attention?

He doesn’t know how to tell them that he’s not asking for attention. He doesn’t want to drag anyone down with him, he just wants to be free, and feel as weightless as he did when he was innocent. He doesn’t want everyone to follow him, and focus on him as the light from the surface grows dimmer and dimmer. What he wants is to have someone give him a line, and pull him up. He doesn’t want others to sink, and feel the nothingness he does; he just wants to breathe the air like them.

John worries about his partner, but he can’t go far enough down as to catch Sherlock. He does the best he can, and gets Sherlock help. At first it helps a little; allowing him to slowly move his arms and catch a small glimpse of water filtered sunlight, by talking to a therapist, but soon enough he is sinking just as much as before. If not more quickly. He stops talking except when something is asked of him, and when he is asked to explain something, but even when he does speak his voice is dead. A monotone string of words, that could match no melody of notes like they once could. His therapist prescribes him anti-depressants; and while taking them, he stops sinking, and simply rests at the depth of the ocean that he’s at. They don’t help him swim, but they stop him from sinking further.

People come to visit him while he lays on the couch. Greg drops by and talks to him awhile, albeit one-sidedly. He drops off some manila folders onto the coffee table, all contained crimes that would read to be at least sixes. Mrs. Hudson brings him biscuits, and fusses about his hair and clothes. Mycroft sits and watches him for what seems like hours before he sighs sadly and takes his leave. Even Sally and Anderson visit him, hoping to get a taunt out of his blank eyes and silent mouth.

John is always in the flat with him, but he’s no longer as worried as he was; instead he’s sad. He can’t help the man on the couch, and feels guilt about the fact. His limp returns, his shoulder is stiff, and he just doesn’t know what to do. He makes Sherlock tea and meals, making him eat and drink, as well as shower and change clothes, since the man neglected all of those things himself. And each night, he lifted Sherlock’s head, and set it down on his lap, stroking his hair as he sadly spoke to the man below that was so far gone, it’s like he wasn’t even there anymore.

Every so often, if he felt he could take it, or someone happened to be visiting late at night, he’d help Sherlock to bed, to lay with him a while before he moved him back to the couch so he could keep an eye on him. Lying in bed, Sherlock’s vacant eyes stared up at the ceiling. John would adjust himself close to his partner, wrapping his arms around him and tossing a leg between Sherlock’s. Tears would slowly stream from his eyes as he spoke softly into the night; talking about random things he missed doing with the detective, or things he missed hearing Sherlock say. What he missed most was the loving _“Idiot.”_ He used to get so often it became the detective’s own way of saying, _“I love you.”_

Each night before drifting off to sleep, John would kiss Sherlock chastely on the lips, before searching his eyes for any glimmer of the man he loved, while murmuring, “I hope to see you tomorrow. I love you, Sherlock”. Each day he repeated the same words, never once thinking about saying anything else. He knew that Sherlock couldn’t be dragged back, just like he couldn’t be fooled back. The only way to bring Sherlock back was to love him, and simply give him security of the fact that no matter how far he sinks, he is not alone.

John’s words are slurred together, and they sound like they are being spoken through cotton under the water, but every so often he can make them out, and each time he can, he feels hope. Hope is a four letter word that holds no meaning; except for when John can give it one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please let me know if you liked it.
> 
> *I'm sorry if this is a bit scatter brained, and isn't as fluid as my writing normally is, but I wrote/am writing this in the same mindset as I put Sherlock in.
> 
> 4/13/15: Please do not duplicate or post this content elsewhere without consent.


End file.
